The Other Half of my Blog Title

Okay, so for years now, I've been "Steampunk and Synthesizers", and I'm kind of shocked that nobody's called me out on only talking about Steampunk and writing. Honestly? Not one of you has wondered, "okay, Ren, we get it. You're a steampunk author. But what about...?"

So here we go.

Friend and fellow author (and the Jedi to my Sith), Kiri Callaghan, recently posted a few recent songs, and it inspired me to get off my butt and post some of my own material. I've had it up on Amazon as a CD and MP3s, but now that I've added some digital audio equipment to my office, I really am quickly running out of excuses.

So here you are. Music.

I included a "radio edit" I'd done for one of my longer songs, and included a song that wasn't even on my original album, "subterranean". We'd stumbled upon the idea for the song while we were doing some follow up work on a different project, and then I went back even later and did some remixing of it, adding some middle eastern percussion and samples to it, and made the song feel much warmer and earthier.

I've also plans to digitize my first album, which means I might finally get some uploads of a few of my all time favorite originals, "The Ballad of the Invisible Boy", and "Between the Mountains and the Sea." There's also a song I wrote with my old friend Storm Hodge, the U2-inspired "Homelands", which I honestly haven't even listened to in years. I'll keep you posted.

The summer's been a crazy one, my friends. We moved into a new house, are in the process of turning the old one into a sold one, and in spite of all that crazy, I've dug about 25000 words into "Dead Man", and started two other short projects, "World War Zero" and "Baktun" - two shorts for an end of the world anthology Talaria Press is doing.

AND.

I'll be appearing at Rose City Comic Con this weekend, at table J-01, with Kiri - and then I get to prep for two cons next month - Geek Girl Con and SteamCon V.

I need to hurry up and wrap "Dead Man", and then I've got to start working on "Dust" with Kiri, plus the follow up to "Apollo Rising" with Jen Ashton. How has my brain not fallen out? Hmm. It's a mystery.

Okay. Back to work.